I meditated this morning for about 8 minutes. I went to a website where Deepak Chopra offered a timed meditation on Hope. I didn’t think I needed more hope. That’s not what I would have said had someone asked me, but in thinking about it I think I did – do – have a serious lack of hope at the moment. Basically he told me to say the mantra: Shivo hum (or something like that) whenever a thought arose and then started a timer and some music and I wasn’t sure I would make it through the time but I did and afterwards I felt great. My body felt a different kind of energy inside it. I could literally feel something inside my body that I wasn’t feeling earlier.
My doctor told me that I need to do something like meditate, mindfulness, yoga – ANYTHING – to help get my cortisol levels down. They are, apparently, off the charts. I thought i was pretty laid back but it appears that i must internalize everything and not let anyone, including myself, know how wound up i am all the time. This explains my inability to fall asleep many nights. So she prescribed some form of mindfulness each day – this was back in December. I’ve followed her advice on this twice since then. Today made three times.
Other health advice I have received/internalized over the years and had never acted on:
- Eat vegetables every day
- Exercise regularly
- Consume fermented food each day
I’m sure there are other just standard practices that we are all told to do and mostly don’t do. I don’t know why I have resisted these things. I eat 3 or more times every day so there has always been ample opportunity for eating vegetables. I just made the choice to do otherwise. I think it was some kind of arrogance – something like “Look at me, not eating vegetables and still seeming like a pretty healthy person.” I can’t quite remember just why it was that I thought that just not particularly caring for vegetables was a good enough reason to not eat them.
My whole point here is that, for whatever reasons, which I hope to explore more over the course of my 25 lucky days, in the past year, and especially the past two months, I’ve stopped resisting. I eat serious vegetables at almost every meal including breakfast, I consume at least 2 Tablespoons of fermented food twice a day, I am DETERMINED to build some kind of mindfulness practice. Exercise? Does yard work count? This is really hard for me – I’m a pretty active person, but I have no regular exercise practice. I’m doing a bit of yoga every night before bed. A little tiny bit to try to help me fall asleep because of the previously mentioned cortisol issue.
And do you know what? It makes a difference. Doing these things that I was told all along would make a difference — surprisingly makes a difference. My body feels better. My body works better. My skin feels better. My mood feels better (not always, but I like to look at the trend which is up). It turns out, no one was saying this to make money for veggie farmers or fermenters or people selling sporting equipment.
Just in case you are curious, the fermented food always seemed so unappealing and difficult. It is so super easy. You can do kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, (some) pickles, kombucha, unsweetened yogurt. I have 2 Tbsp of unsweetened kefir after breakfast every day and 2 Tbsp of red cabbage sauerkraut at lunch time. Sometimes I have some T.J.’s Synergy Kombucha because it is tasty and very low in sugar. I will expand to kimchi in the near future because I’m learning that variety is the spice of life.
Why am I writing about this on my second day of my 25 lucky days? I’m determined to make these 25 days count – to be ready for whatever luck comes my way. But to be ready when things come my way, I can’t be down. I can’t be angry/scowly/overwhelmed/ipad addicted/depressed me. It would behoove me to be my best me. And it turns out that these things I’ve dismissed for so long are at least part of the key to being that version of me. Another MAJOR part is spending time doing things you love and being with people you love. OR, as I think i sort of learned from Marie Kondo, figuring out how to feel love for the things you are doing and the people you are with. But I spent a lot of the past 20 years doing things and trying to convince myself that I felt love for them, so this is a fine line to walk. You have to recognize that thing that is you that you would pay someone else to let you spend time doing and then find some way to make a tiny space in your life for that to be alive.
I recently saw (a recorded video of) Kamal Ravikant giving a talk about love and entrepreneurship and he said (my paraphrase from memory, so hopefully it resembles what he actually said), to succeed you need:
- To do something that is an expression of your true self
- To give it your all
- To put it out to the world
- To let go of the outcome
I am working on that. I don’t actually know what “succeed” even implies. I guess for me the four steps above are just necessary for feeling that feeling of being alive. Inhabiting life.
In summary, lucky day #2 was a good one. I moved forward in tiny ways on several things that matter to me and did what I could do to be ready for luck to come my way. Onwards!!